


Neville's Summer

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Comedy, France (Country), Gen, Herbology, Wood Nymphs (Harry Potter), Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 17:29:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16560137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: Neville has faced down some things in his (short) life. Beyond just his uncle’s myriad attempts on his life, he’s faced down the Fractious Frangipani, terror of the New Delhi Herbological Gardens. He’s handled the Howling Houndstooth of the Outer Hebrides. He’s climbed the hidden peaks of New Zealand in the dead of winter to harvest a few sprigs ofGlaciei vitro.Butthis.This was beyond the pale.





	Neville's Summer

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Harry Potter and The Death Eater Menace](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15833898) by [TheSinister_Man](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSinister_Man/pseuds/TheSinister_Man). 



> Written for the first POS-Prompt challenge on the Prince of Slytherin Discord Server as a last minute entry. I won.

Neville has faced down some things in his (short) life. Beyond just his uncle’s myriad attempts on his life, he’s faced down the Fractious Frangipani, terror of the New Delhi Herbological Gardens. He’s handled the Howling Houndstooth of the Outer Hebrides. He’s climbed the hidden peaks of New Zealand in the dead of winter to harvest a few sprigs of _Glaciei vitro_.

But _this._ This was beyond the pale.

“Knight to D4,” he said.

Across the board from him the wood nymph raised one birch-bark eyebrow. At a gesture, her bishop darted out.

 

* * *

 

He knew three things about this wood nymph. Firstly, when spoken to, she preferred the name Thessalonia. Secondly, unlike all her kin, she was utterly, utterly mute.

Thirdly, she _led_ her kin, and so he needed to win this match if he wanted her help.

And oh Merlin did he want her help.

 

* * *

 

“Pawn…” Neville said slowly. “To F6?”

The smile Thessalonia gave him was saw-edged like a birch leaf.

 

* * *

 

There were three rules on the Pyrenees estate.

First: don’t taunt the vultures. Second: don’t wander off. Third: don’t piss off the wood nymphs.

Neville went and did all three.

 

* * *

 

Neville wasn’t the greatest at chess. He knew that. What’s more, his chess-set never liked him much, probably because he’d lost against Ron enough times that it didn’t trust him anymore. Now it was facing up against Thessalonia’s own set made of the wood nymph’s mother-tree and he started to think the magic of it was unnerving his.

Psychological warfare. On chess-sets.

He spotted an opening. It was gambit for sure, but if he managed it he could take her queen and put her knight on the back foot… assuming he could pull it off as tidily as Ron would.

 

* * *

 

Now, to be fair, he hadn’t exactly _intended_ to break the rules. He’d laid out the meat to try to lure out the Etheldreda’s Sundew, which was having a sulk, and he’d wandered off a little way to try to give it space and… well all right, he’d wandered straight into the wood nymph’s grove but you couldn’t possibly blame him for that! He was in a desperate rush to get back _down_ the mountains and he’d never seen Watchers-in-the-Woods before, not in person, and he’d completely forgotten the warnings.

 

* * *

 

_Watchers-in-the-Woods_

_Small fungi closely resembling common field mushrooms in shape and form, these mushrooms are often found around the bases of trees and can be identified by their single watching eye. Most common around the groves of Wood Nymphs and similar plant-based magical creatures, Watchers-in-the-Woods have even known to be cultivated by broody nesting Bowtruckles. While it is possible for wizards to cultivate the fungus it requires skill, practice and often permission to collect spores._

_It is never wise to cross a boundary of these fungi as it often marks a magical one kept by those who cultivate them. Unless one is friendly with those individuals, it is best to wait outside until approached, as Wood Nymphs and their kin can be brutal in their attack._

\-- Excerpt from the _Longbottom Family Herbological Records_.

 

* * *

 

Thessalonia gestured, her hands shaping a flurry of forms. One of her sisters stepped out of the trees behind her.

“She says, _will you not concede now?”_

Neville studied the board. He knew he wasn’t very good at chess and he’d honestly very much like for Ron to be here to help right now but there _had_ to be an opening.

He glanced up. Thessalonia watched him with heavy-lidded eyes, a frond of root-hairs acting like eyelashes sweeping down as she cast a pointed glance of her own over the board. Long fingers ( _sharp_ fingers, Neville knew) gestured at the check his king was currently in, then became just two upraised fingers.

The message was clear. _Two moves left._

Neville was many things. He was a Gryffindor and therefore sometimes prone to recklessness. He was pureblood born and raised as well as rather wealthy, and he could be rather prideful at times. He was a nutter for his plants, if you listened to half his friends, and that could lead to both of the first two in large quantities.

But he wasn’t a total idiot. He nodded.

“I concede.”

Well _fuck._ How was he supposed to get back down the mountain and fend off the attack now?

 

* * *

 

Here’s the thing about the Pyrenees estate.

 _It was way too fucking close to Beauxbatons._ Plenty of British wizards dismissed Beauxbatons as pretty and prissy and without any real bite but every last one of them was an idiot. Half the estate staff were Beauxbatons graduates and amongst them two of them had scars from pissing off wood nymphs over Christmas and two more had close relatives who were veela in some proportion. Beauxbatons prided itself on growing most of what it needed in its semi-subterranean greenhouses and selling off the excess to the French markets and did _not_ like having a competitor so close.

Here’s the other thing about the Pyrenees estate.

The LaFee of Broceliande did _not_ like his family butting in on one of their areas of trade. It’s not that Herbology was even _that_ big a focus for the LaFee - mostly they worked on perfumes, scents, distilled oils, extracts and syrups - but they did have large gardens, and they did grow some things which grew nowhere else. They had long been one of the three premier French families when it came to providing potions ingredients and they liked that position.

They were, pointedly, the _third_ of those three families, but they took pride in that spot nonetheless.

The LaFee, the Beauxbatons staff and students, and for that matter plenty of other Frenchwixes, did _not_ like the idea of a British family getting their hooks in the French herbological market.

As Gran always said, the war between France and Britain was never over.

 

* * *

 

Neville carefully packed his chess set away. Thessalonia’s was reabsorbed back into the mother-tree, fed in one-by-one by sharp-tipped hands. He tucked the pieces into the board and folded it shut, and packed the thing into his backpack, grateful for the expansion charms.

He brushed himself off. He looked to the edge of the grove.

“Right,” he said. “Well… thank you for a very good game of chess. But I’d best be heading back now. I’m sorry I trespassed.”

He was almost at the edge of the grove, about to step back over the line of the Watchers-in-the-Woods when he heard a voice say, “Wait.”

 

* * *

 

Neville’s first day at the estate had been… well, dull. It’s not that every trip with Gran to look for new plants or look over their current crops was a rollercoaster of excitement… well, okay, yes they were - but this was to _France._ Not to Africa, not to South America, not to the Himalayas or somewhere else halfway around the world.

It was _France._

But he’d listened and learned and tried to help them. He’d helped with the dittany crop - not a patch on the farms of it over at Lourdes, but the land there had been owned by the French government since the revolution and there was no chance of them buying any up - and with the small greenhouse of moly, kept carefully separate. For years his Gran hadn’t dared let him anywhere near moly, able to halt magic in its tracks, in case it made him a full-fledged squib. To be able to handle it now… well it was the closest to _thrilling_ his first day got.

It had been mid-afternoon when he’d been asked to help with the first major project of the day - getting the Etheldreda Sundew out of its strop and into its new greenhouse.

Apparently it didn’t want to budge and was sulking behind the compost heap.

Neville had sighed. _Plants._

 

* * *

 

Thessalonia spoke with a flurry of gestures. It was nothing like the muggle sign language he’d heard of from Hermione, or the sign language used by mute wizards in Europe based on Roman oratory hand signals. It was something very… _tree_ , all sweeping movements like the wind, twists like a trunk, strange creaking noises that could only come from strained wood.

“You have dignity,” the wood nymph who’d translated before said. “And honour. To play a game and hold to your word without asking more than permitted. To concede, rather than hold to pride. Tell us what has happened, and we will see what might be done.”

 

* * *

 

So, to be fair, Neville didn’t actually _know_ entirely what’d happened. He saw the smoke rising from below, saw the signs and heard the sounds of concerted spellfire and he _knew_ that lime-green hex that his Gran liked so much, the one that could twist someone halfway around and half-inside out without actually _hurting_ them any. She’d only use it if they were attacked.

Well. Maybe if one of the remaining Rosiers had visited. She hated them.

But a Rosier visiting didn’t explain fifteen minutes of complex spellcasting and one of the storage barns being set on fire - or, more likely, having a fire set against it. The barns were all bespelled to repel fire and could do so for upwards of six hours so long as their spells were up to standard.

The most likely thing, Neville knew, was that some right idiots had decided to stage a raid against the estate to try to push them out of France. Whether it was the LaFee themselves - unlikely, they preferred mergers and alliances to violent takeover, and he knew that they’d been dancing around Gran for years on that topic - or a band of hired thugs or even just a group of national-pride blinded wizards he wasn’t sure.

What he did know was that his Gran was down there and while he’d seen her signature hex, he’d not seen anything more for the remaining five minutes of spellfire.

 

* * *

 

“Always meddling,” the translating wood nymph said. Beside her, Thessalonia shook her head in disgust. “Let us call on a friend, and see what can be done. You are a good boy, to be loyal to the line of family.”

As Thessalonia wandered off, plucking at birch branches woven together like a harp, wood nymphs began to step out of the woodwork.

 

* * *

 

He’d been in a rush heading back down. This was probably why, despite going around the outside of the Watchers to try to get an idea of how big a colony there was on his way up, he stepped right into them on the way down.

Well, that and the fact that they’re _Watchers-in-the-Woods,_ and he’d never seen a colony this perfect nor heard of one this well-cultivated in all his days.

He was regretting his rush right now.

As Hermione would say, “plan _then_ act.”

 

* * *

 

Neville headed down the mountain flanked on all sides by wood nymphs. Most of them weren’t that tall - Thessalonia, who was almost as tall as his Gran including her vulture-hat, and her translator were the tallest, and the translator was a head shorter than her. Most of the rest were shorter even than Neville but they had sharp dark eyes and sharp-whippy branch-hair, and sharp-sharp claws at the ends of their fingers.

They looked like a murderous shrubbery and Neville’d been terrified of those ever since he fell in the Pugnacious Privet when he was six.

At the rear a woman in white and blue followed up. She was beautiful as a veela, if somewhat less hard-edged when she looked angry, and sometimes she crouched, running a hand along the ground, muttering something sing-song in another language.

“Basque,” the translator said, slipping back to flank him. “She’s of the xana - cousins to veela. We have an agreement with her clan.”

“Err,” Neville said. “Right.” And then, when the translator showed no sign of moving elsewhere in the pack of people, “I don’t think I know your name.”

“Betula,” she said with a smile. “And we all know yours, Neville Longbottom.”

Behind them the woman kept walking, and kept running her hand along the ground at intervals.

 

* * *

 

The estate, when they reached it, was a mess. The spells on the barn hadn’t crumpled yet, but the farmhouse was hexed to hell and back, with half the windows shattered and the rest stained by spellfire. Two more of the barns had fires against them, as well, and one of the dittany fields was ablaze.

The raiders, it seemed, were gathered in the main courtyard.

Between all the bodies, Neville could make out his Gran’s tied-up form.

Somehow, her hat was still on her head.

 

* * *

 

Thessalonia gestured quickly. Wood nymphs broke off from the pack, running to put out the fires, quick and quiet as a flurry of autumn leaves. The rest of the wood nymphs, if anything, seemed to get sharper, claws lengthening and a fuzz of splinters rising out of the armoured bark of their shoulders.

Neville wished he had his wand.

From the back of the group, the xana woman swayed forward. The swath of wood nymphs parted in her wake, and against their birch-pale skin she was somehow paler still, and ethereal as a veela. But where she went the grass flourished instead of burned and when she reached the front of the pack she thrust her hand in the air with a string of words which were definitely _not_ French.

 _Basque,_ Neville remembered.

The ground rumbled.

The ground _cracked._

Then, out of the ground, burst a huge red-and green serpent. Paving cascaded off its head, mortar dust pouring down its sides as it screamed a challenge.

En masse, the raiders turned.

 _"Sua, nire maitasuna,”_ the woman said.

The flames it breathed were far brighter than those ablaze in the fields or by the barns.

 

* * *

 

It was all over rather quickly. The wood nymphs moved with incredible speed, cutting tendons and reflecting spells sent at them with their bark. Several cut the cords holding Neville’s Gran and the staff.

The dragon - _cuelebre_ , Neville learned later - lashed out viciously from its vantage in the middle of the courtyard, the xana singing in Basque to it the entire time. With half a grove of wood nymphs to hand, the raiders were quickly felled or captured, only speeding up as Gran and the staff were freed.

“Well,” Gran said, bleeding slightly from a scratch over her eye. “What did you get into now?”

 

* * *

 

When the whole story came out his Gran was actually kind of impressed. She had that same proud spark in her eyes she’d had as when she realised he did have magic, and each of the times he’s actually succeeded at anything.

“And you’re willing to make a trade deal with us?” she asked Thessalonia, while they waited for the aurors.

Thessalonia shook her head, gestured. “Not with you as a group or a family,” Betula translated. “With _Neville.”_

They’d almost finished hammering out the details when a hissing, scrabbling noise came out of the heavy thicket by the compost bins. A long flexible red frond swept out, close along the ground, and wrapped around the leg of a raider.

 _Finally_ , it seemed, the Etheldreda Sundew deigned to emerge.

It looked _happy._

 

* * *

 

“So that was your holiday?” Hermione asks. “You got to handle moly for the first time in your life, you negotiated a deal with some wood nymphs, and you helped to relocate a man-eating plant?”

“Etheldreda’s are only man-eating if you let them grow out of control. We feed Eldred pigs.” He tilts his head. “Mostly. He did try to eat a few of the wizards who tried to raid the estate.”

“And you didn’t see fit to mention the raid _before?”_ asks Harry.

Neville shrugs. “It didn’t seem important,” he says.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Technically Xana are Asturian and not Basque, but as this was happening in the Pyrenees and people can migrate and move, I see no reason why this Xana couldn’t be fluent in Spanish, Basque and French. Especially given that canon has part-Veela (from the _Slavic_ Vila) in _France._ Its plausible enough, in my opinion. The words are supposed to be Basque for “Fire, my love.”
> 
> Wood Nymphs are from canon; purportedly they live around Beauxbatons and help to decorate the school over Christmas, sometimes singing for the school.
> 
> Fractious Frangipani, Howling Houndstooth and Pugnacious Privet are all plants I invented for this fic.
> 
>  _Glaciei vitro_ is from my headcanon blog, and you can read about it here - http://themonsterblogofmonsters.tumblr.com/post/86050933447/glaciei-vitro-or-the-ice-tree-unique-to-new
> 
> The same goes for the Etheldreda Sundew, which you can read about here - http://themonsterblogofmonsters.tumblr.com/post/129876831087/etheldreda-sundew-a-red-or-gold-coloured-sundew
> 
> And for the Watchers-in-the-Woods, which you can read about here - http://themonsterblogofmonsters.tumblr.com/post/103500995655/grigori-mushrooms-watchers-in-the-woods-known
> 
> The LaFee are one of my own inventions, which I’ve covered before over here - http://thelethifoldwitch.tumblr.com/post/107451046314/the-perfumes-of-the-lafee-family-are-always
> 
> Yes there are vultures in the Pyrenees. I’ve seen them. I mostly saw the more common variety, griffon vultures (which seems a wonderfully fitting name) but there are also another, rarer kind of vulture sometimes sighted out there, the Lammergeier or Ossifrage, commonly known as the Bearded Vulture.
> 
> They eat bones.


End file.
